Marching Song
by kimberlite8
Summary: Sandor's war letters to Sansa while he is on campaign. An epistolary smutfic. "It feels so sweet to fall asleep with your words in my head, your letters underneath my hand. Like I could actually believe that with all the world has to offer, you chose to sit in this muddy tent only because I was here."
1. Chapter 1

This is an epistolary story - written completely in the form of letters from Sandor to Sansa while he is campaigning. As with real letters, Sandor crosses out text as a form of self-censorship after the fact. Since ffnet does not allow strike through text, the self-censored parts are formatted using brackets and italicized text like {_this_}.

Tremendous thanks to my beta redgoddemandsit!

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11/28/303

Lady Sansa,

Maester Samwell promised me that he would carry this baggage to you when he departs for Winterfell in the morning. The ground is full of mud and slosh and that'll make the journey harder than it should be. I hope he reaches you before the fourth day of the twelfth month.

I found it necessary to convince him but you need not fear I used my usual methods of persuasion. Your fat friend was easy to bribe: some men never find the right woman, I'd say Maester Samwell has never found the wrong honeycake.

It was the last one from the food parcel you sent me.

As you know by now, we have been campaigning rough for a fortnight ever since the wildlings ambushed and broke the supply line. Half of them we killed, but the other half tucked their tails and rode off on our own bloody horses with three months' provision of grain and wine. And the buggering filthy savages stole the pig fat, Others take them.

The timing could not have been worse. We had slaughtered all the livestock not two days before. Ramsay had driven out some of his own animals from the castle's gate, they mixed with ours and within a week, the cows couldn't stand proper. We launched some of the carcasses back at the whoresons. The rest we burned for fear of pestilence. Of the corn we have left, I've ordered the lot to be saved to feed the warhorses. We men have been dining on firecakes. Not made from flour but dried, ground up turnips. Leaves you staining your breeches brown but at least it fills the belly enough for a man to sleep. Old turnips were the only foods we could buy at Pink Lady, the sole town within ten leagues that still had a heart beating inside its crippled bones. I've received word from White Harbor that the the new supply train should be here within the week. If not, I'm not sure who will be more hungry, the besiegers or the besieged.

Desperation and foul temper have turned some of my soldiers into common thieves. Some days I think I'm playing nursemaid rather than commander. Green boys are easy to drive but hard to lead. Disorder is rampant. I ordered half a dozen of them whipped for foraging from the smallfolk. Bloody fools, starting one rebellion as we try to quell another. Seizing the farmer's cattle condemns him to death as sure as if I were to put him to the sword after the sack. These Dreadfort peasants already live so close to the ground. Many of the plowing fields south of the Sheepshead Hills have been wrecked by the marching armies of Boltons and Baratheons and Freys that came before us. I'd be lying if I said I give a rat's arse about the starving poor any more than they shed tears when they see the rotten rich destroy each other. But I'm trying real hard here not to the sow the seeds for next year's smallfolk insurrection. Receiving a horde of bedraggled Pates screaming for bread while armed with their wooden pikes at the gates of Winterfell won't win me your kingly brother's favor, I'd wager.

Speaking of your brother, you may tell him that his siege engine is a thing of marvelous refinement. We had to dismantle one of the supply ships that sailed up the Weeping Water for the timber to build her but 'Ladywolf' was worth the sacrifice. I call her a 'she' because 'she' is beautiful. No pulling ropes like the machines of our fathers' time, just counterweights. My lady bombards the Dreadfort walls daily, we target weak spots in hopes of causing a breach. She can cast a rock weighing eighty stones. Or speckle the sky with a traitor's head - yesterday I was treated to the splendid sight of Hosteen Frey's ugly face flying a thousand feet high into the air, in an arc that surely must have landed him way beyond the Dreadfort's killing grounds. We captured the hot-spurred fool after a sortie he led from the gates went to shit. If the gods are good, his rotting head plopped straight down into the castle well where it will poison their water. I can see your face wrinkling. Don't. I thought it through. Hosteen Frey was no good for ransom and someone had to pay for us succumbing to hunger. Everyone was so cheerful over it, I know I had a good laugh.

As for the mine gallery, I give it another two months before we penetrate the heart of the castle. It will be bloody sweet, the day I can paint the wooden timbers supporting the tunnel with buckets of pig fat, set them to the torch and lay to waste to this shithole. Right now the gallery runs sixteen feet past those ugly triangular merlons that look like teeth. I tell you, that was sweat dripping, body battering labor, sapping stone buttresses eight feet thick. But beyond the merlons, the ground is just clay, soft and yielding. I feel like a man with his maiden bride. Once you break the virginity, slack and sweet. Before the supply line ambush, we dug three feet a day. Could do twice that but the men have to work silently which means they can't work swiftly. The only way to combat mining is countermining and I dread the fight being brought underground where the earth can bury men alive. I'd wager that swaddling infant Ramsay Snow knows precious little about defenses against siegecraft. A captain of experience would have littered the castle battlements with bowls of water, so that any disturbance caused by the digging would create ripples indicating where we are underground. Still, I sleep a little less easy at the thought of being proven wrong. What the Bastard lacks in seasoning he compensates with a kind of animal cunning.

Anyhow. Enough about the siege.

Near everyone here has fallen prey to some kind of gut illness except for me. I'm keeping to myself, pretending to be sick for the sake of decency. It gives me some quiet and the time to finally write to you. Don't be angry that I haven't replied as often as you've written. I don't how to make the stuff in my head sound good, light and free from the real dark stuff here and still be interesting to a lady who reads as many books as you do. Should I write about the weather? You northerners never cease running your mouths about it.

It's bloody wet. The constant rains have surrounded our encampment with hundreds of little lakes, some six inches deep. I don't mind it so much. Saves us the trouble of drawing water from the river, we just leave the buckets out. And the mud is so courteous, slides right off so I don't have to clean my boots. Might be I have lost the habit of regarding the weather: if it rains, we get wet, and if it doesn't, we don't, and if the sun shines, good. It's not so bad lying on my stomach on my straw pellet reading one of your letters again with the sound of rain pattering against my tent. Drowns out the noise the packs of men make out there - yelling, cussing, fighting, laughing and singing. Seven hells. Bloody racket day and night.

That it should bother me so. I never use to loathe war, I loved it nine tenths of the time and hated the thought of it being ended too soon. I told you once that killing was the sweetest thing there is ... When I was younger, I savored the first cries of "attack" coming from both sides, dodging the blow that would have hacked off my arm could produce a sort of joy only bested by the screams of "help" coming from men great and small alike as they lay in the grassy ditch with their broken lances and split heads, the shadow of the Hound the last thing they see before he sends them off to meet their gods. Yet here I am today, misery fitting this dog like an old damp cloak cause he hates being away from home. _{I can understand now why all the good ones were unmarried: it's not the coward's fear of death that eats away at him but the fear that by death a soldier is prevented from returning to the woman who waits for him.}_ Bloody hell. Ignore me. I think the hunger is making me stupid.

Am I ever hungry. _{Usually, I go to bed dreaming of you but}_ last night I dreamt of roast duck with pomegranate sauce with an intensity that was almost frightening. The crispy skin, the tender flesh, duck fat dripping off my lips. Eel soup with mace and cream, carrots roasted with butter and mint, brown bread still warm from the oven so the sweet butter melts the moment you spread it. Those jugs of that nutty dark ale you know like I so well with my meat. Smacking my lips now as I write this down. It was the last meal we had before I departed Winterfell if you recall. Or can you recall? After we finished the pudding, you had drunk so much icewine that you were nodding off while trying to raise the glass to your lips. Your maids had to come to usher your disgraceful arse to bed. I fight back a smile every time I revisit that evening in my head. _{Little bird, little bird, I miss you so bad.}_

If only today had brought one of your letters! I know ravens get lost sometimes and the distance between Winterfell and the Dreadfort is far. But I'm longing to hear from you so much tonight, like never before. Just when I think I've reached the peak of my impatience, I am punished and have to wait some more. Not much to do to ward off boredom and loneliness save brawl or whore. I'm keeping myself straight but am I so bloody sick of being in this kennel. _{A man needs good meat, good wine, and good cunt to keep from going fucking insane.}_ I'm at my wits' end.

I read and read again your letters so often, I don't even need to see the parchment any more to recall the words. _{I like to touch them anyway, did you seal the envelopes with your spit?}_ No, you do not "twaddle on too much" – what bloody nonsense. I have never thought that and never would. Please continue to write to me, girl. Don't wait upon my answers. I want you to tell me about everything I'm missing out on, being away. I want you to tell me about you.

I suppose that's enough writing for now. I have about an inch of candle left for my light. And my hand is cramping. I'm not used to writing letters to a lady. I'm not used to writing letters. I like it, though.

Happy seventeenth name day, little bird.

Your servant,

Sandor Clegane


	2. Chapter 2

12/4/303

Sansa,

Lord Manderly arrived four days ago. His supply ship carried hay for the horses and wheat and flour, wine and ale, beef and mutton, fat lambs and poultry for the men. Combined with the restored supply train from Winterfell, we'll have enough to feed three hundred men for another five months or nearabouts. Laughing as I write this - do I sound like an old squirrel admiring his winter store of nuts to you? I bloody feel like one.

Manderly made good just before it was going to get real bad. Two days before he turned up, a duck wandered from out of nowhere into our encampment and was fought over by five of the strongest men who ate it beak, bones, feet, feathers and all. That pretty bit of business is now forgotten as if it had never happened and the nightly feasts are raising the spirits of even the grimmest here. Despite the rain dripping from our tents and the puddles at our feet, the mood is so high you could almost believe we were at Winterfell and not this pisspot. After each evening's feast, the men all lay about underneath makeshift canopies, drinking ale by the warmth of the camp fire as Manderly holds court with a tree stump for a throne. The old man has a strong laugh and excellent taste in wine, so is well liked. I told him one of the japes you told me in one of your letters – the one that ends with "Surely, you wouldn't send a knight out on a dog like this?" He slapped his knees and laughed until he could not draw breath.

He's been begging the girl Turnip to leave with him when he departs our camp for Winterfell. Was that at your command? I've bloody tried for your sake Sansa, you know that. I threatened that I was going to truss her up like a sow for the slaughter and throw her in the back of the caravan if she didn't leave willingly along the rest of the Winterfell captives that we freed with the hostage exchange. But the stubborn fool looked up at me - straight in the face - and said "I'd like to see you try." Her voice – damn. Cold is cold as ice is ice. I'm not going to get into what she went through in the Dreadfort's dungeons, and might be you already know from Old Nan, but if she wants to stay here to help string Ramsay's guts along the castle walls: fine by me. Look, the thirst for vengeance is as strong as any other human emotion and her feelings are powerful and natural. I understand this truth better than most and I'd wager you do too. I'm not going to deny her personal satisfaction the way I was robbed of mine just because she's a woman and is supposed to have a woman's heart or some such foolery.

Anyhow, she's been real useful. Says her father Gage was the cook at Winterfell. The man was a strange one to call his daughter after the vegetable people eat when they have no other options but I can't deny that he trained her well. Give her a hundred pounds of flour and she'll turn it into a hundred and thirty pounds of bread. Better returns than any camp cook I've ever known. She's almost too bloody resourceful and I'm real careful with my silver around her. Gambling on louse races is what passes for refined entertainment around here. We'd line up our empty dinner plates, each pluck a louse from our heads, and the first louse to crawl off the plate is declared the champion. Turnip's would always run quicker than anybody else, night after night. It was bloody baffling until one time, I had the mind to reach over and feel her plate. Wouldn't you know, that cunning little bitch had been heating it beforehand!

Maester Samwell said you keep my nameday present with you at night instead of banishing her to the kennels. And have endowed her with the name of Jonquil. I knew you'd call her that, little bird. As to her history - I found her six months ago wandering the banks of the Weeping River. She wore a pink collar with all the gems plucked out, I'm guessing she must have been one of Ramsay's hounds though you would hardly believe it. The bitch was as ragged and rawboned as any Flea Bottom mongrel. I made the mistake of giving her a piece of bread and was rewarded by her trying to sink her teeth into my arm. Didn't hold her piss poor manners against her, though, as animals are at their most dangerous when they have the fewest defenses. Might be she read me for a bleeding heart because the creature would not leave me alone after that. Followed me all the way back to my tent. With a little time, I taught her to earn her keep like the rest of us with soldier's work. Turnip's not the only one here whose blood runs true – my grandfather would have been pleased.

That fucking Ser Stupid injured her during his ill-fated sortie, gods' rot him. She paid him back – I saw that the fine studded chain mail near his thigh was shredded by what could only be dog's teeth. Good for her. But that buggering Frey scum managed to cut off part of her left ear. I mended it with rough stitches but you'll notice it's half ragged, so now she's ugly like her master. It seemed to me like her injuries should earn her a soldier's pension so I asked Maester Samwell to commend her to your care. He tells me she's made no friends at Winterfell, barks all day and night long, and snaps at anyone who comes near. Some men have a hard time settling down after war: getting into fights, drinking too much. Might be some dogs too. So whenever she tries to snap at you, just take her entire muzzle in your hand, apply light force, and say "no" in a firm voice. The little bitch is fearful, thinking if she acts this way, no one will harm her. She's never bitten me hard enough to break the skin since the first day we met. I know you'll excuse her for her missteps and find her worth saving. You're good at that.

Maester Samwell also said he did not find you well and that you sleep a lot even in the daylight hours. I was surprised by his words as your letters are always so lighthearted that sombre things don't seem to exist at Winterfell. I know I've said to you before that I don't like fruitless complaints or people who wallow in feeling sorry for themselves but perhaps I didn't say that right and you misunderstood me. I want us to be able to speak plainly to one another and face facts, rather than run away from them. Might be you think you can't share your darker moods with me and if that's the truth, then I regret whatever I said or did to make you think that way. I sometimes forget that a man's feelings, though perhaps rougher, can never be as sharp as a woman's. Write to me exactly how you feel without any pretend gaiety. Inflict your sorrows on me - I will thank you for it and not bawl you out over it ever.

The sun is setting just about now. In honour of your name day, I'm gulping a big swig of that Dornish sour you sent with Maester Samwell. Spent today doing my "knitting" - boiling all my clothes and linens in salt water to kill off nits, followed by a scouring bath in one of the nearby hot springs. Apparently, I had been harboring some nasty fat fellows. I plucked one from my scalp and threw the bugger into a melee. There he was, surrounded ten to one by ants, and wouldn't you believe it, he fought them off! Writing to you now with fresh and dry clothes on my back, a shaved face and short, combed hair, while eating the first of your sausage rolls. It feels good to feel like a man you could oblige at your supper table on your name day, rather than some vermin crusted wildling whose company wouldn't be fit to grace a sheep sty.

This is the first of your name days we have been apart since you were sweet fourteen. How about we make a pact? I want you to drink a glass of wine every day at dusk and I'll do the same. This way, once a day, we can be together.

Those sausage rolls you sent are excellent - lots of black pepper and garlic and fennel, the same way they make them in the Westerlands. Did Alyce make them? I don't think so, they were so much better than hers. Give the kitchen maid who made them my thanks and tell her I'll get her back when I return. It is so sweet getting one of your parcels. But why do you keep writing about whether I'm going to find them good enough? I know very well that you send the best you can and they are always marvellous. So don't you start worrying whether I'm going to be disappointed or not! This last one had everything I asked for and plenty that I didn't think to ask for. I laughed at the bloody shedload of soap you sent me. Suppose those of us who have a hard time with godliness must settle for cleanliness.

Sandor

P.S. I just opened up the jam jar and found the miniature. Did you mean to send this?

Your hair color is different and your face looks so bloody young. I'm guessing the miniature was originally a betrothal gift for the Arryn heir? It's too costly and too old to have been made for me.

I ought to thank you, I suppose.

As for that queer little note scribbled inside the jam jar… if it was meant for me and not an old relic written for that fool boy mouldering in his grave, all I can say is this: I'm not done with living yet. I didn't fight through the siege of Pyke, the battle of Blackwater and the retaking of Winterfell to become worm meat at the "Drearfort." This will be but a summer skirmish when the maesters write their histories. I've lived under the Stranger's hand and served his rule for too long and too well for him to summon me at the ripe old age of thirty-two.

There is a spot on my trestle table that my eye catches the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. I'm going to place your sweet portrait there. Never doubt that I'll be returning home, little bird. The septons say that the Father's eye is always on the sparrow but my eye will always be on you.

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Author's note:

This story started as a prompt made by coveredincleganedna for the SansaxSandor Livejournal letter exchange. Her prompt was "Pervy letter detailing all the things Sandor wants to do/will do to Sansa when he gets back from the campaign he is currently on." By the way, her name day is the fourth day of the twelfth month ;)

I promise that this story is going to get absolutely filthy (and I don't mean that I'm going to subject my readers to more anecdotes about Sandor's lice!) but the settling allows me rectify something in canon that absolutely breaks my heart: Old Nan at the Dreadfort. There's a lot of good things about being an asoiaf fanwriter and one of them is the ability to give redemption or happiness to characters who would have otherwise received none. So in "Marching Song" Old Nan has been freed from the Dreadfort via a hostage exchange and is now back in Winterfell with some of the Stark children she raised. I've also elevated Turnip, Gage's daughter, into a bit of a mini-heroine who gets a measure of justice.

I intend to only write this story from Sandor's POV (for reasons that will be clear later). If my readers are interested in knowing what was Sansa's jape that she wrote about in her letters, here it is below. Its of unknown authorship, just one of those bad puns that have been around since time immemorial. Sansa, like the rest of the Starks, is a bit of a wet blanket. I imagine she keeps an ear out for japes that she thinks will make Sandor laugh. Perhaps she has even a little notebook where she jotes them down for her letters to him. If you open one of those notebooks up, you'll find this old chestnut that might have been fresh in the Middle Ages:

_In the days of yore, a knight was on his way to do something terribly important, riding his horse into the ground to get to his destination as fast as possible. After being ridden too hard for too long, his horse became lame, and seeing a small town ahead he headed straight for the stables there._

_"I must have a horse!" he cried "The life of the King depends upon it!"_

_The stablekeeper shook his head. "I have no horses," he said. "They have all been taken in the service of your King."_

_"You must have something - a pony, a donkey, a mule, anything at all?" the knight asked._

_"Nothing... unless... no, I couldn't"_

_The knight's eyes lit up. "Tell me!"_

_The stablekeeper leads the knight into the stable. Inside is a dog, but no ordinary dog. This dog is a giant, almost as large as the horse the knight was riding. But it is also the filthiest, shaggiest, smelliest, mangiest dog that the knight has ever seen._

_Swallowing, the knight said "I'll take it. Where is the saddle?"_

_The stablekeeper walked over to a saddle near the dog and started gasping for breath, holding the walls to keep himself upright. "I can't do it." he told the knight._

_"You must give me the dog!" cried the knight. "Why can't you?"_

_The stablekeeper said "I just couldn't send a knight on a dog like this."_


	3. Chapter 3

12/6/303

Sansa,

I promised myself I'd write to you every chance I had, so here I am again.

Buried one of my men today. His name was Rickard, one of the Mollens. Did you know him? Good fighter, sound instincts and strong as iron. During the wildling raid on the supply line, his nose was cut off by one of those buggering savages and then he was trampled by a horse that broke three of his ribs. The ribs healed but the nose wound became infected and he died of a poison in the blood last night.

We wrapped him up in a grey wool blanket and buried him far from the Dreadfort. Found a bit of dirt that was as good a resting place as any common soldier could expect. The ground was blanketed with jonquil and daisies and some whitish weed that looked like cow parsley or baby's breath but wasn't. Heard he had a woman back home and two children, one born, one on the way. Seven bloody hells, that the gods can fell a man with little worse than a scratched face.

Well, other things happened here besides that but I don't want to talk about the siege or any of that bloody business tonight.

I'm eating shaggy mane mushrooms fried with salt pork for my supper, so you can envy me for once, brat. On the way back to camp from the burial, I found a place that was would have made your mouth water. Damp fields abound with those mushrooms – I never saw so many packed so tightly. And at the center of the field, a great oak tree carved with the face of old bearded man. Some forest god of long-dead men, I suppose. He didn't look like the kind of god that would have begrudged me what he had in plenty and I was able to pick a couple of pounds in just a few minutes. Do you remember that time I made you breakfast? Fried bread and eggs and sausages and heaps of mushrooms, as my lady commanded. It's bloody stupid that when you're worn out from campaigning without rest, dirty and unshaven, the smallest things can cause a lump in your throat.

Sansa, don't you want to know how many times I've written this letter? Four. I can't seem to control my quill, or might be I don't want to. I've begun four times and have torn it up four times and now I'm resolved to continue no matter.

I keep seeing you as you were that day I left Winterfell. The image is so clear to me in memory: your boots muddy and your expression blank as the wind and the rain lashed your cheeks. You said nothing then. Not with your lips and not with your eyes, though I searched them hard for meaning. I wondered at your mysterious silence then and I wonder at it now.

This is not another surly complaint about the oftenest of your letters. You always write promptly. And prettily - all those little stories, polished as silver plate, flowing from your quill to touch my senses. They make me laugh, I'll give you that. How do you manage that trick of sounding both intimate and aloof at the same time? Is either one totally true? I ask myself why do you keep writing, the same elusive letter, day after day? Or did you write different letters in your head?

Meanwhile, I write and write and hardly know what I've written, save that I've already told you things on paper that I would never have said as free and as plain as if I had spoken them aloud. I told you in my prior letter that you ought to be honest when writing to me, that you should face facts and not run away from them. So I'm going to just write down whatever needs to come out. Might be writing to you is the only time I can get these things out of me. It's tough as hell here and the bloody noise of insects and barking dogs and whining horses and the riot of drunken oafs all seem to crowd into my tent and crush against me. I try to remind myself that my moods will darken your hours when my letters reach you, days after the I have slain whatever miserable beast that is currently squatting inside my head. Yet there's a choking in my chest and I can't cover up that I feel things, things a man shouldn't admit to: being lonely or frustrated or fearful or just bloody aching for a woman's comfort beyond the use of her cunt. Might be I'll embarrass you. If it pleases you, politely use this paper to wipe that arse of yours that never shits. But don't let anyone read my letters. Ever.

Where the bloody hell was I? Breakfast. Mushrooms. Please respect my right to certain stupidities, foremost of which is the desire to dwell in the past. Mayhap the lack of sleep has softened my brain, I can't think of the future, and the present just exists as one breath at a time. Do you remember that day - it was almost ten months ago? You had gone hawking with Willas Tyrell and didn't come back until three hours past the time you were supposed to return. The cripple stammered some apology about a horse losing a shoe, while you stared at him with a shy half smile playing across your mouth. Old Nan kissed and fussed over you, while I, as is my nature, backhanded you with insults out of fear for your lostness that had been eating at my guts the entire time. You weren't at supper that evening and I knew by the tiny touch of daggers your maids' eyes threw at my back that my sharp words were the cause.

I tell you now, though it does me no honor: I was sorry but mostly glad. I ate my food picturing you in your maiden's bedchamber whose threshold I've never crossed, staining those little flower-patterned pillows I imagine all noble girls have with your tears. I laughed out loud thinking of your face buried in them so your sobs couldn't be heard and snarled at the fool next to me who had the impertinence as to inquire what was so funny.

You see, I am so very jealous of you. And sometimes I want to punish you a little for making me half-crazed and wretched. I'm jealous of everyone you spare a smile for, even Maester Colemon who has too little hair and too much neck and wears every conceivable stripe of blatant buggery. Girls, old nurses, even brothers, because your love for them is so bloody paramount. There is no jealousy, though, as vengeful as … Sansa, Sansa… damn you, spoiled creature, that I have to say what you should bloody already know full well. I can only be friends with you as long you weren't anybody else's. Believe that. Because I love you. And I don't know if I've ever loved anyone, save maybe my father who I didn't much respect or my sister who I find it hard to recall what she even looked like beyond a pair of sad cow eyes. Might be that's why I'm so needy and why it would torture me with the fires of the damned to see you belong someone else. A man's heart is not nice: it's aggressive and pushy and a greedy bottomless pit. I'd be friends, just for the chance to be near you. But the moment you get into something with some other man, I'm out. I'm not going to kill him. I'd just disappear. No violent outbursts. Just gone. Those were my thoughts when I saw you making sheep's eyes at that smugly, pompous, crippled little bore and nothing about how I feel has changed since or ever will.

As for that miserable supper - whatever spiteful triumph I felt disappeared after the soup course and afterwards I felt so low I wanted to die. I forced three skins of wine between my clenched teeth that night so I could sleep but kept waking up with the kind of fitful alertness of a man afraid of his heart stopping while he slumbered. I finally gave up on getting any rest and got up to fetch another skin of wine and there you were. In the kitchens. Nibbling on some bread in your fur bedrobe with the smocking of your white nightgown peeking out and your pretty hair flying loose naked.

Seeing you like that… Gods, I felt the meanest twisting in my chest and stomach. You were so beautiful. So many nights I would lie awake imagining that I was in your bedchamber, undressing you for bed like I was one your bedmaids. Have I shocked you? Might be you think my love is a filthy thing. It is, at some moments. I've dreamt of you in filthy poses. Do you ever want me like that? You always do in my dreams… how you'd smile as my fingers schemed through the mysteries of silk and laces to reach the sweetest body that ever set a man's blood on fire. You'd stretch your arms high above your head as I covered you in your bedgown, moan like a puppy as I searched out the pins in your hair to pull them free. I'd hook my arms underneath your legs and you'd clutch at my shoulders, holding onto me as if I had cut through fire and spears just to save you. Then I'd lay you down your bed and fan your hair out across your pillows. I think you can guess what would happen after that, girl. I'd be real gentle, though. Nothing nasty.

I'm not sure what I actually said to you – too concerned with trying to hide the tent of my breeches as you now understand. I remember you pouring two glasses of wine. I remember, probably under the benevolent influence of that wine, mellowing out a bit. I remember offering to make you a fry-up for breakfast because you said it would have been unkind to wake up a kitchen slattern an hour before dawn. I wanted to be alone with you so bad that I was glad to be put to service.

We ate from the same bowl like two pups. I gave you most of my mushrooms. You said some things and laughed but I'm not sure what you said, save that every word seemed to come out of your mouth rolled in sugar. Did I ask you to sing for me? I can't recall it but I must have. Because suddenly you were humming and then your honey sweet voice drifted on the air like an invisible mist. It was that song, the one you promised me all those years ago, about the fool and his cunt. I stopped eating and I stopped drinking only to listen. And somehow the years fell away and the past and present all became jumbled together in some unseen tumbleweed of baby's breath. Gods, what a bloody sad scrap of foolery I just wrote. Don't scoff, I know you felt it too, didn't you? It was one of those moments, so painfully sweet, that you want to repeat even while you're still living them.

After your voice died away, you leaned towards me, lips parted, eyes softening as you lowered your dark lashes. I'd have killed then and there just to know how your mouth felt and I bloody well know you wanted me to do it. But the morning bells chimed and we could already hear footsteps and whatever spell we were under was broken.

That crippled bugger left shortly thereafter with no contract signed and my heart swelled so much I thought it would spread my ribs. Yet you never came again to the kitchens, though I spent many a pre-dawn morning waiting there.

I never said anything to you about it. I didn't know if you gave me the right, though in the loneliness of the moment, I'd often pretend in my letters that you had. Only children and fools think that those of great estate marry as they will and not as they ought to. I shouldn't need you to tell me different. I was there when you arranged your seven year old brother's betrothal to restore Winterfell's exhausted coffers. And I was there to see Tyrell's lavish gifts of birds of prey and gems the size of fists arriving at Winterfell with maddening steadiness all those months since his departure and before mine. Yet where am I today? Sitting in this muddy tent, that's where. Seeking favour - as if one traitor's head is worth eighty thousand bannermen or however many you counted in your ledger books for Highgarden. Who's the bloody fool with the head full of songs now? Stupid dog. Sometimes I want to smash my skull against a wall for relief.

Little bird, I don't know quite what happened to us. We've never truly touched and yet I feel the weight of our past as if you had once been mine - intensely, intimately - and now you're not. You sobbed the very moment I showed up at the Gates of the Moon. You kissed my hands like I was your lord after I used them to strangle that monstrous whoreson. I could have had you then, I'd warrant. All those nights we slept side by side on the cold ground during the journey North. I'd lie beside you and feel your body heat and I tell you, it would ignite me like a coal hidden beneath ashes. Ofttimes I'd find myself mouthing the words after I heard your breath come in slow and heavy and knew you were asleep. Not because I meant them then, I didn't know you all that well. I just knew that "love" was what girls like you needed to hear before they let a man spread their thighs apart.

But I never said them or asked you for anything, though you were so bloody grateful. Don't mistake me, it wasn't because I was a good man: it was because I was a guilty one. The Quiet Isle fucked with my head a little. I needed to be there for as long as I was but I tell you, it was another kind of kennel. Seven bloody hells, I've been crowded into one kennel after another since the day I left my father's house. Some nicer than others but in cages, all animals begin to fester. I'm indebted to the Elder Brother but damn him if he didn't cross-infect me with his own peculiar breed of madness. He made me believe that I was worse than other men of my kind. Believe that the desire to kill my brother was a sin so terrible that it made the gods shudder, rather than a natural response to a hurt so grievous that only blood could atone.

Yes, I've done some real bad things but I'm better than they raised me to be and that's got to be rare.

With you, with you … I'm thumbing your miniature now and laughing. That bloody artist could have used his cunning to paint you as beguiling as the Black Pearl of Braavos. It would have been better bait for the Arryn heir from what I know about that cuntstruck fool boy. Instead, he painted you like that - a barely nubile girl in a white high-necked gown and an expression of innocence that wrung the heart. It's your gift, I suppose, some trick of the bone-work, that your beauty can be so changeable in a way no painter could ever capture the truth of. Did you mean to send it to me as a jape? I know you didn't, but it feels like it, a reminder of my former folly. All those silent dusks I spent on the Quiet Isle, lying flat on my back in the grass looking up at the sky with my hands clasped beneath my head, thinking about you. Always, you'd be on your knees, praying for my soul in some cold sept, blue eyes and auburn hair and a face too lovely for any woman on this earth.

That first year we were together… forgive me for how I contributed to your unhappiness. When you weren't perfect and sweet and didn't fit into the mold of a proper lady, I'd get real cross and said things that made you cry. I just couldn't see you clearly, not as a real person. Instead you were this immaculate white handkerchief that I could use to wipe away the badness from myself. And I didn't want to dirty you with a man's needs because you were as pure as the Maiden, you had to be, in order to fix all my sins. It took me some time to get over those gnarled, twisted ways of thinking. Somehow as I began to throw them away, you picked them up. Might be I infected you in turn.

Oh, I'm not saying I don't have things to answer for. It causes me many regrets and much sorrow when I remember that you met me in such a shitty place, full of mostly shitty people, and I made so many stupid, violent mistakes with you. I wish I could go back and not make those mistakes, could have protected you when you were hurting so bad. I hope that my conduct since then will make you realize that - notwithstanding my shortcomings - I'm not the man I was back then. Sansa, little bird - when I say this, don't think that I ever forgot one kind word or gesture from you - but I'm sure I've paid you back by now. And I want to spend my life paying you back, filling in those gaps, fighting all those battles that you can't. But I'm not just your sword, I'm a man. One who wants to feel needed by someone who deserves - and doesn't take for granted - what he has to offer. When you were fourteen, I was your hero, and that was the best feeling in the world and its hard not to grow attached to someone, to love someone, when they can make you feel that good. Now I'm the stray dog you adopted out of the kindness of your heart.

Well, I've been moaning all night and must catch an hour's sleep for tomorrow's labor. I suppose you are accustomed to men making bloody fools of themselves over you and writing this letter full of nothing but my complaints probably isn't going to make you love me any better. You only have yourself to blame, for sending me your miniature and planting expectations in my head.

There's something between us, isn't there? I know it. And I'm going to do what it's asking of me. As for you, my pretty Sansa, it will always be there whether you like it or not.

Sandor


	4. Chapter 4

This is an epistolary story - written completely in the form of letters from Sandor to Sansa while he is campaigning. As with real letters, Sandor crosses out text as a form of self-censorship after the fact. Since ffnet does not allow strike through text, the self-censored parts are formatted using brackets and italicized text like {_this_}.

* * *

12/14/303

Sansa,

I wasn't expecting to actually have said anything that would sway you, so forgive me if my feelings are a little difficult to convey.

I received your letter two days ago and haven't parted with it since. I keep your pages always with me, in my pouch. If truth be told, I'm worried that the words would somehow be different every time I look at them. I have to read your sweet words over and over, so I can tell myself that I'm not imagining things.

I've done a lot of that – imagining things - in the past eight months with this hellish siege dragging on. What would you think of my bloody arrogance that I thought it would take me four months to seize the Dreadfort when it took Harlon Stark two years to achieve the same glory? I suppose I just needed some private foolishness to retreat to after the day's labor is done. Couldn't return to my old lover - a commander must lead by example, not get piss drunk every night. Now, I'm not stupid and I never thought you were mine. When I wrote to you, it was more like I was telling myself bedtime stories, pretending that you had made promises. Though you never wrote anything to discourage me. Not like you ever would, would you? You're the sort of girl who'd hate to hurt a man's feelings.

That last letter was the most shamefully soft thing I've ever written. In my defense, I wasn't quite in possession of myself. Rickard Mollen's death left me feeling sore and bruised in a way that whatever invisible armor I wear wouldn't fasten proper that day. Telling you those things, things I've kept inside of myself for three long years… have you ever been ill as to require a bloodletting, little bird? First cut hurts like hell but with it done, a man can feel all the poisons escaping, making room for relief. And now I've gotten your reply - offering the things that had consumed me for as long as I could remember - ah beautiful. Bloody beautiful. Just knowing that I do those things to you, make you feel that way – I can't tell you how good it feels. It's like having a window suddenly open after years without any fresh air or sunlight.

My sweet Sansa, your parchment is not a fortnight old but it's already damp and dirty and falling apart from overhandling. I've committed your passages to my memory. You write real tender, real beautiful, each word conjuring up the shape of your precious thoughts for me like magic. The things you said: damn, girl. So sweet, so bloody sweet. I half expect to wake up in a puddle of my own vomit, with a hunk of strange mushrooms in my hand, and discover I dreamed everything you said up. I'm going to write something you said down, so you can read your words again and correct me if what I repeated back was somehow mistaken.

"Yesterday I picked the last of the strawberries that we planted together in the Glass Gardens before you left. I had foolishly hoped you would have returned before they had ripened. The roses are blooming as never before, not those frail things of yesteryear, but huge vibrant congregations of dark blue petals that choke the air with their perfume. I cut off a few and placed them in your bedchamber and wondered if you'd prefer strawberry tarts or lemoncakes after this evening's supper. Then I laid down on your empty bed and curled up with Jonquil by my side. I pressed my face into her sweet, coarse fur and had a good old howl. My lady mother was of my age when my father rode to war; how did she ever bear this restless agony and insatiable longing? I don't think men can have the time to feel the awful heartache that women feel. You are commanding an army, always in the middle of your labors, which is why you write so rarely and your thoughts are so much more jumbled than mine. In the meantime, I sit waiting in vain day after day. Sandor, you cannot know how deep and ardent my feelings for you run. When I was a girl, I longed to give my soul to 'Love' … oh, Gods be good, it is so much harder than I ever fancied. I feel as if someone uprooted my heart to see how it was growing."

"Someone uprooted my heart to see how it was growing" – how exquisitely you dress what I can only feel as some raw and dumb pain. I miss you, my sweet girl. I miss you even more than I could have ever believed possible and I was already prepared to miss you a bloody good deal.

Do you want me to say I love you? I love you. However much you need to read those three words, you can pretend I've written them here twice as many times.

Ah, bloody hell. I'm sorry this letter can't be longer but I'm running out of parchment. Please send lots of parchment with the next supply train. Don't laugh at this but send me one of those blue roses too. I don't care if it's some brittle, dry thing by the time it gets here. I want to smell it and think of its scent on your morning fresh skin. I crave feminine things because that's what I don't have anymore. Everything here is so hard and sharp and noisy. I want to escape and go someplace nice and dry and warm. I want silence and clean air and fresh flowers and a deep featherbed with soft white pillows with you lying in it. Just you and nobody else around for a hundred leagues.

Little bird, I want you so bad with the kind of hunger I've never known. You were pretty to me before but appealing in the way of flowers arranged in a vase: petals so lovely and fragile but inviting no touch, only polite appreciation. Now that I know you want me the same as I want you, Seven Hells. It's all I can think about. I imagine your eyes on me, your hands on me, your mouth on me with an intensity that's so primal and crazy-making, it leaves a dog howling. Damn me, if I don't sound like a madman that can only babble nonsense.

Write soon, little bird. Please write something sweet and {_dirty_} about how much you love and miss me. At least four pages long. And sprinkle the paper with your perfume – the one that smells like a field of flowers with a hint of lemon.

Forgive me, I don't want to be difficult, I'm just bloody desperate. Each night I dream of returning home, of holding you in my arms, but when the drum beats in the morning I wake up and find I'm here and you're not.

Sandor


	5. Chapter 5

_and Rickon was terrified of the needle, which it seemed to me, Maester Colemon took a good long time to apply. He cried a little but was mostly interested in the actual burning of the wart. Afterwards, I helped him with his bath myself. He asked after you. He found the louse races very funny (though Sandor, that was utterly disgusting!) and insisted that he be sent to the Dreadfort to serve as your new squire. Of course, not one hour after his bath, I saw him in the courtyard with mud stuck in his hair looking as if he had just crawled through the godswood on his hands and knees._

_Every time I look at him, I see you. Not a physical resemblance as that's impossible but rather how emotions play on his face, his gestures, the way he expects others to tremble at his little bursts of anger (I tease, lovers can do that with one another, can they not?) Even his speech reminds me of you. He told me recently that he loved the word 'bugger'. "I just love it," he said, pleased as pie. Now it's 'bugger' this and 'bugger' that. I do wag a portentous finger at him but to no avail. My threats mean little to him and Bran's mean none at all. I suppose we are little better than larger size children to him. I do believe you are the only person since Osha passed away who inspires in him a respect equal to, if not overcoming, natural affection. How I wish you were here! Nine, ten, eleven – these are the ages where children are vulnerable to any powerful influence, don't you think? They change so quickly. Insignificant differences day by day, week by week, month by month, hardly noticeable until suddenly there is a different person altogether._

_That came out all wrong! I don't mean to say 'Return to Winterfell now' to master a nine year old. Believe me, I never forget that I live in great comfort and luxury while you live in a tent in the mud and suffer all the griefs of war. How I wish I could be there with you… I want to be at your side always._

_Shall I tell you a secret? Do you want to know who made those sausage rolls you loved so well? Alyce says I have a natural gift for pastry because my hands are colder than most and one needs cold hands so as to not melt the fat in the dough. I imagine that sometimes, being a kitchenmaid, as light and as carefree as one of those brazen common wenches whose loves make no difference to the world beyond their own bed. You'd see me in the kitchens on one of your afternoons off and you'd pull up a chair and spend your hours lazing about, watching me ready the meals and talking to me, oh about everything and anything, in that soothing molten-metal voice of yours._

_I don't think I shall ever outgrow daydreaming, much to yours and my lady mother's despair. She used to bring me back to attention with an affectionate snap of her fingers, same as you do. Don't chastise me too harshly, Sandor. I endured King's Landing and Littlefinger by marshaling my imagination and through outright denial at times. When I thought of Winterfell, which was always, I thought of it as it existed before I had left, even though I knew it could not be so. The dream of returning has been the crutch to my survival. But now that I am here, the real thing is so much more painful than I could have prepared for. Three years later and I still find myself sweeping broken shards from scorched rooms, haunted by the ghosts of all those, great and common, who were once nurtured by these walls during my untroubled childhood._

_You're right about my brothers - my love for them is paramount. I would do anything for them. When they were returned to me, I was so happy, so deeply happy, that it felt like a form of hysteria. If only I wasn't so inadequate at everything. I see Rickon look up at you as if you were some tower of adulthood and I feel envious, at you and at him. At you because I marvel at the resourcefulness you possess, the kind that I feel should be mine because I am seventeen and a woman grown. At him because I long to be that light again, I want to have the whole problem of living lifted from me and to be carried at the hip like a child._

_I certainly do tend to make a mess of things that should be simple. This promises to be our worst financial year yet. Our losses – financial, political, military - could be reversed at the stroke of a quill … well, let me get away from all that. I don't feel like talking about it anymore. I shall be yours, I must: anything else is unthinkable as that other thought that I never entertain anymore. "The Father's eye is on the sparrow…" I recite that line so often to myself when I feel awful and the only thing I can see is you, wrapped up in a grey blanket as they lay you to rest in the cold ground far away from me._

_Forgive me for being morbid. I know you will come back to me and then we can resume as we were meant to. I think a lot about those months we spent traveling to Winterfell. I know they were miserable – sleeping on the hard ground, dandelion weeds for breakfast, wet flints and unlightable fires and us puffing into our blue-cupped hands for warmth. But it was the only time I've ever been alone with you for long. How reserved you initially were towards me! Do you recall? You'd portion out your contact as incrementally as you'd portion out our food. A hand on my shoulder, a hand on my back (oh, are your hands ever so big!), each touch slightly more certain than the last. At the end of it, I found a spot on my sleeve that you had rubbed so often the wool frayed. Was it because you needed to distract your thumbs from going to the places they usually like to go with women? I understand, perfectly. I could hardly look at your hands at times without fighting the absurd urge to either suck on your fingers or to bite them off, so great was my thrill and dread at the thought of what was to come next. The fear would even invade my dreams with my sleeping-self conjuring the most terrifying images. Of you, pushing and pushing, uttering four letter words against my ear, your body all big and solid and far too much. Even your fingers looked absolutely immense, Gods only know what other parts would do. Split me in two, mayhaps, though the thought never seemed half as bad as it should. I don't think those feelings have quite ever left me, hard as I tried to lock them away. They only seem to grow, so hideously strong at times that I have to go and huddle in my room and bite at my pillows. I dare say someday you'll actually kiss me and I'll be blown into nothingness, all my thoughts dispersed like dandelion fluff drifting off on the wind._

_Oh, I can't believe I dared to write all that! Is dying of embarrassment a possibility? If I never send this letter, then you'll never know. But I suspect you want me to make a mortifying mess of myself. 'Sometimes I want to punish you a little' you said. Are you pleased?_

_Sandor, I drink a glass of wine every day at dusk, just as you instructed. Shall we make another pact? Will you sleep with my letters underneath your pillow? That way it's as if we shared a physical bed together. I've been doing this for the past fortnight and it gives me the sweetest dreams of me being your lady and you my lord. I know they must come from some place very old to be so potent, though I don't know how much longer I can feed off such dreams and stay sane. In dreams, you can have your eggs perfectly cooked but you cannot eat them. Therein lies my downfall._

_It's almost dawn here. Rickon and I fell asleep in my bed while we were reading together and I didn't feel like getting into bed again after I returned him to his. So I started writing to you because my thoughts always come back to you when I am alone. It promises to be a lovely day and the red sun is just peeping up over the East Gate. There's a little snow on the ground. It reminds me of the summer snows of my childhood when I felt cosseted and loved and protected._

_I've just opened my window and stuck my tongue outside. Now I imagine kissing you with the snow on my lips. Just seven little kisses, one for your brow, two for your eyes, one for the top of your nose, one for your mouth, and as it is quite early and you're still in bed and may be not entirely dressed, two for your chest, right at your bare nipples._

_Love,_

_Your (red-faced) little bird_

* * *

12/15/303

Sansa,

I've just written you a letter not twelve hours ago before I received your latest. But a letter like yours demands an immediate response. I have no parchment and can get none from the maester, Gods' rot that fat fuck. Your other letters are too old and worn to survive the trip, so I must write this on the back of the last page I received, though I am as loathe to part with it as I would be with one of my nipples. Bloody hell, little bird. Now all I think about is that my body trapped between your little white teeth. That's good, that's real clever like. What else do you want to do to me? Hmm? Tell me, my greedy, greedy girl.

Of course I'll be sleeping with your letters underneath my pillow. I sometimes fall asleep reading them already. Or doing other things with them, truth be told. You know what gets my blood hot? The way you rule your paper. Who the hell does that anymore? Dozens of missives from you, each page carefully ruled, your neat feminine handwriting never deviating from the lines and every sentence punctuated with a perfect little dot. I picture you at your writing table with your ruler and your leadpoint, laying out your guide lines with mathematical precision just as your septa taught you. As if you were writing some bloody illuminated manuscript instead of letters to your dog. I don't know why but the whole thing makes my ballsack tighten. Do you like to think of me like that, naughty tease? On my back, reading one of your letters, big and stiff and boring a hole through my tunic and cloak. I stroke myself, tight and slow, with a palmful of spit and think about you. You ever touch yourself thinking of me? Is that what huddling in your bedchamber and biting at your pillows means? Tell me how you like to play in the dark and be specific about it.

Anyhow, if you don't, you ought to. No need to feel ashamed. All boys do it. When I was Rickon's age and packed with fifteen other boys in sleeping quarters at Casterly Rock no bigger than a privy shed, half of them would be fisting themselves with the covers kicked off while the other half would be crying for their mothers. How I ever got a wink of beauty sleep with all that awful mewling, I don't know. I'm not sure about girls, never having been one, but it's perfectly natural and don't ever let anybody tell you different. If you're feeling lonely and unwanted, it can solace you.

Rickon's a good boy. He has two of the greatest virtues a man can possess: bravery and honesty. Not entirely convinced he isn't a simpleton yet like his father and your brother Robb though I mean to cure him of any blood born stupidity. I wish you'd listen to me when I say he's old enough to start practicing with an edge. Too long with a wooden sword and boys pick up bad habits. Steel sticks to warm flesh and you can't learn how to properly withdraw a blade without using a real one. In fact, send him off to help with the butchering. He's old enough to learn how to kill a pig with the least amount of pain and stress for the animal. When I was his age, I was already working in the slaughterhouse at Casterly Rock and could break any hold or grip, even knew how to stomp a man to death.

Yes, I hear what you say about our looks. I went riding out with the boy a year ago and we met some old farmer who mistook him for my son. Thought old man was blind, Rickon looks nothing like me. Still you ought to have seen my face – I beamed as bright as the bloody lighthouse at Oldtown. I missed Shireen's name day too, you say? Well, give her my belated greetings and tell her what a girl does on her name day she reaps throughout the year. She's a fine girl, shy as a doe, but I reckon she's the sort that once you win over her confidence, you'll have her complete devotion. Any bloody fool can see that. She'll make Rickon a fine wife if he looks beyond the misfortune of her face. Children and dogs are good value. What you put in, you get out with a little extra.

'Griefs of war' – true its a hard life here but that doesn't affect me so much not having you with me. This morning I found myself singing a song while shaving. It was 'Autumn of My Day'. The stupid words seemed to flow out of me and when I had finished I fought back a smile. Not a smile because I was happy but a smile that said my heart was missing someone sweet. Bloody pathetic and I wasn't drunk either so I can't blame my gushing on the wine. There I told you about it and now you got something over me too. So don't go off and die of embarrassment about having girly wet dreams about me.

'In dreams, you can have your eggs cooked perfect but you cannot eat them.' Oh, I know all about that kind of hunger, having felt nothing but my own hand for so long. I can't even remember the last time I've been with a woman. Might be five years. Not saying this to make you think better of me because it has nothing to do with honor or faithfulness. I didn't even know you wanted me like I wanted you, so how could I make those kinds of promises? Its just when you've been starving for so long, your mind starts to want only one sort of food. The best, most perfect thing. I don't want to fuck anybody else. Anymore than I would want to eat a turnip ever again. Bloody hell, I can't even remember the last time I was with a woman. Not because I was too drunk but because the things I imagine doing to you are just that real. So real I got the crispest memories of it.

Do you want to hear something funny? So what do you think I like to do in the evenings to calm down? I take your miniature and put a magnifying glass in front of it. If I move the glass slightly back and forth against the candlelight, it looks like your mouth is opening to kiss me. Bloody indecent that mouth of yours. I do it for as long as an hour sometimes, playing with your miniature and the magnifying glass, imagining your mouth and about kissing you. I'd hold your face between my hands, stroke your hair. Just in case you're going to 'blow away like dandelion fluff,' pretty bird. You sure have a way with words and with me. There's other ways I think about your mouth and about holding your face and hair too. I think you can guess what I mean. I would never ask for that though because you're a lady. Well, except maybe on my name day. I'd tell you more but I want to see how you write first. I've never even seen you laugh at a bawdy jape, in fact the opposite - you're so bloody adorable when you wrinkle your face. Just begging for a man to lead you astray.

I have to finish this letter now because the ravens are ready to leave their coop. Sansa, I want you to know that I am always thinking about you and long to be back with you again. Gods hasten the end of this siege and shorten our days of suffering.

Sandor

* * *

Author's notes:

Hello readers! I received a lot of feedback asking for Sansa's letters so I thought I would include a large excerpt in this chapter. I don't think I'll be returning to her POV, so I hope you enjoyed what I wrote here.

As to why I've avoided her POV in the first place... I started writing this story as a response to the SansaxSandor LJ community'sraven exchange , a fan challenge where you write handwritten letters in the voice of Sansa or Sandor. I actually wrote the first letter (and got a cramp like Sandor!) and sent it to coveredincleganedna.

I took the whole letter writing aspect too seriously I suppose and decided to avoided Sansa's POV partially because I didn't want to rule my paper. Ruling paper was quite important to medieval people as a mark of refinement. You can read more about it by googling "ruling paper medieval" as I can't place direct links.

It struck me as something that Sansa would absolutely do because that's how she rolls. And it struck me as something Sandor would find really provocative because in my headcanon, his sexuality is quite refined and picky, even if he himself is uncouth.

I am going to turn this into another illustrated novella just like Running with the Hare and Hunting with the Hound. Apologies for the late update of this chapter, my fannish energies are divided between the design aspect of this new story and actually writing it. I hope my update schedule will be once every other week now. Thanks for all your kind comments and encouragement. No story I've written has received this volume of feedback and I am much thrilled and by warmed by the response of the Sansan community.


	6. Chapter 6

12/28/303,

Sansa,

Just kissed your miniature "good night" and despite my kisses, your face doesn't look too happy with me. Why is that? Couldn't be because my letters have never been as sparse as they are right now, could it? Beg your pardon, my lady and if it makes you feel any better, I got a real guilty conscience about it. It's getting to be a nasty habit of mine to be neglectful in writing but I've been so busy losing this war that I haven't found much time to do anything else.

For the past month, we've been preparing the grounds around the Dreadfort to support the siege engines. Dismantling palisades, filling in ditches full of water and sharp spikes, smoothing slopes for the towers' wheels. The kind of work that is so punishing and near thankless that I sleep like a dead man each and every night. Maester Theomore said we would be done today while smiling that tight, smug smile of his. I ought to have wiped it off his face with the back of my hand. Damn him and damn me for whatever trust I put in him before. My own pike pierced the soil and the dirt was loose enough to send a siege tower four stories high and packed with assault troops toppling sideways.

It has been one round of setbacks after another and nothing's done to my satisfaction ever. I'm feeling too weary tonight to even be angry. Or might be I spent all my anger on Theomore when I mashed his soft white face into the loose soil. We started exchanging words while I was inspecting the grounds until he wore out my patience with all the noise he was making. I pulled that fat fuck from off his horse and roughed him up a little. Foremost, for his arrogant ignorant foolishness. But also because I hate having to look up at a man while arguing with him, especially those who were born to be looked down upon. Bloody quarrelsome fool, thinks he's Lann the Clever and you can't be at his turkey-necked age without showing it before. And I don't give a shit that the Citadel granted him an iron link either. I had a mind to consign him to White Harbor or the Citadel or to the buggering Seven Hells but Maester Samwell protested that we need as many healers as we can get. Believe me, I'd have to be at death's door before I'd ever call for that condescending bastard. The only pain I'd like that Theomore to remove is the pain in the arse he gives me.

I tell you Sansa, we give these whoresons too much regard when the machines they build are often little better than coffins for the assault soldiers who ought to be granted the true credit for victory. Who else does all the pretty work of swimming moats and scaling high walls and fighting in close quarters against desperate men who have every advantage in their own grounds? Seven bloody buggering hells, I'll never forget the storming of the castle of Pyke. I was the same age as you are now, armed and armored with little better than a dagger and boiled leather, when the soil caved in from the weight of the siege tower. The maester who built it named it Checkmate, Gods' rot him - it wasn't 'checkmate' for the Greyjoys but for the company of green boys inside the thing. Those that weren't killed by the collapse were left to burn when the buggering ironborn poured down buckets of boiling grease and then raked the wooden contraption with showers of incendiary arrows. Frontal fire and cross fire and diagonal fire and my sole retreat blocked by more fucking fire. The heat got so bad I could feel it stabbing against my back, sharp as any spear. And the bloody noise! Did you know fire has a sound, little bird? One that you even can't begin to fathom when you're warming your hands over a crackling campfire. But when you're surrounded by it, inside of it, the sound is deafening: a roaring, devouring beast that muffles even the loudest of screams. Some men jumped to their death, not that I blame them. If I hadn't torn off those animal hides covering the framework - well, I wouldn't be here now asking you not to angry at me so I sleep in peace at night, would I? Seven hells, no man can truly understand a terror far beyond dying unless he's personally been trapped and felt the fire's flames.

As you can expect, the rot set in after that and for the rest of the day, I was snarling at everyone and everything and every idea and ended the evening by screaming "fuck" outside my tent because it was only possible response to meet the justice of the day. The curse was delivered with such violent promise that Theomore tripped over his own feet and fell down. You'd think that would have at least made me crack a smile but my sense of humor disappeared along with the dregs of the last wineskin. Yes, wine rations are low and I have more or less stopped drinking, which under these conditions is like deliberately inciting a nightmare. Gods, what I wouldn't give for a flagon of Dornish sour. Granted, it's not completely dry here. Turnip took to brewing this sour soupy ale that smells like the contents of my chamber pot and which I have to force down like medicine. Vile thing only succeeds in making me feel cold and nasty. Ever notice that when you've been drinkless for a long time, the stench of liquor is revolting, while milk and water begin to taste good? Queer, that. Well, I suppose you don't know, good girl that you are. I've only seen you tipsy that one time, the evening before I left Winterfell. If you did know, you'd appreciate my feelings. Believe me, I hate sots that live by, for, and through, liquor. How bloody pathetic is it to go through life in a drunken haze, never sure of what you said or did the day before? But it's damned if you do and damned if you don't. Because I tell you, walking this murderous world as sober as a stone is bloody frightful. I'd forgotten how afraid men are. And how desperate. And how dull. More grievous than that, I miss my own quiet. I have so many thoughts crowding my brain all the time. Not brilliant thoughts like you have, pretty bird. Just this ugly, loud noise that hollers right in my ear and that wine helps to mute.

Anyhow, I shall continue with these confessions of a drunkard at another date. I'm boring even myself and whether I curse or complain, it changes nothing. I still share a tankard with you at dusk every day, except it's with water now instead of wine, so don't you stop that. Sansa, believe me, I wouldn't put this load on anyone save you. You're the only one to whom I can moan. I'm moaning and groaning on your very soft and very naked perfumed shoulders. Be kind to me, won't you? It all seems so futile sometimes. But it must end soon because I have just got to see you and be with you again before long.

Now to your letters. I received four since I wrote to you last. The latest arrived just this morning and I read the whole bloody thing dear right before breakfast. Afterwards, I had to shut my eyes so I could give myself over to how good you make me feel. The scent of your perfume on the paper, it messes me up bad but in the nicest possible way. Made me forget where I was for a moment and all the frustrating agonies of the hour. My sweet Sansa, my little bird - you know why I'm always calling you 'little' this and 'little' that? I got what, thirteen inches on you? Less than what I have on most women, so I suppose you're not so small, but 'little' has such a pleasing sound to it. When a man says it, he thinks of someone sweet and loving and lovely, someone he wants to hold in his arms and pet and cuddle and kiss. The kind of girl who has that thing about her, the thing that makes you want to walk beside somebody for as long as it lasts. I suppose that has been my life's ambition since I met you – finding ways to run into you by working out when you'd be there and then being there too. Sansa, I don't think you have any idea what it means to me when you write me these letters. It feels so sweet to fall asleep with your words in my head, your letters underneath my hand. Like I could actually believe that with all the world has to offer, you chose to sit in this muddy tent only because I was here.

"I shall be yours, I must; anything else is unthinkable" – that line cracked me right open, knowing what you feel for me goes that deep, that you're weighing passion against reason and saying fuck you to the latter. I have to share something with you that was a bit embarrassing. My squire came into the tent and caught me in the act, hunched over your letter like I was a starving animal guarding my last morsel of food. I wonder if he could tell what was in your letters? I'm too stupid to know how to read without my lips moving. Even if I could read as well as you do, I'd still like to mouth the words because when I read your letters, I want to hear them in my mind, in your sweet voice. You're as bland as butter, but damn me, I don't how you do it. I imagine it's some spell you got me under. One that makes reading about kisses feel almost as good as the real thing and your words about licking my nipples can burn a hole right through my body. There doesn't even seem to be any kind of build to it either. One moment I'm real calm and still inside, then I see you write about how much you want to "please me" and "hope no other girl has ever done it better" and at the sight of your neat, ladylike handwriting with two of the sweetest words in the Common Tongue underlined and I can feel my pulse just about ready to leap out of my body. And Sansa, you sure can make me laugh too. When you admitted to being tormented by your thoughts of the imaginary hordes of women you fear I've been fucking under your nose at Winterfell and outside your sight at this pisspot: "don't go off with her, I've got something to offer too." Gods, that was good! I'm dying; I'm dead. You are ridiculous, girl. But I'm grateful for a little ridiculousness right now. I've never been a maiden's fantasy before, just some whore's regret.

My sweet Sansa, my little bird, my little cuntie. Does it bother you if I call you that? I don't know how lovers' talk, so possibly I'm butchering it. Might be you'd rather I call you my lady love but that doesn't sound half so tender to me as little cuntie. "Sandor, if it was your name day, what should I do to treat you? I want to spoil you rotten." When I read that question, I got the biggest grin on my face. Don't you know that my favorite pastime and simultaneously my worst torture is imagining five hundred new ways to fuck you? I've lain awake night after night, the incessant noise of the camp giving away to the sweet press of my bedtime fantasies of you. What do girls think about when they think about laying with a man? Hmm? Four letters later and still you play coy. Well, whatever girls think about, I'd wager it's a good deal nicer than what men think about. Men are a dirty disgusting lot. I don't think I've ever had a beautiful thought about you that wasn't chased by some filthy thought about you. If I haven't been so blunt about them, well, it's only because I've been cautious, the way a man gets when he's trying to give a good girl what he assumes she wants. I'm not going to do that anymore, not that I ever did a marvelous job of it in the first place. All I got is the truth. I hope maybe you'll like it.

Remember how you said that you daydreamed about "being a kitchenmaid, as light and as carefree as one of those brazen common wenches whose loves make no difference to the world beyond their own bed?" I liked that. I go there in my head a lot now since you wrote about it. To the kitchens of Winterfell in the pre-dawn dark and that's where I find you. My shy beautiful young little bird, dressed in thin peasant clothes. Because you're not you, you're not the Lady of Winterfell, and nobody gives a rat's arse in whose bed you lay. And I'm not me either, I'm just a common soldier. One who has pried you open with wine and words and kisses. Until you're melting like a snowflake and I find in your sweet body the desires your lips won't ever admit to. Sansa, Sansa, why is it that you never ask for the pleasure you want? Just like with all your cryptic letters, you make me give to you. Is that what you like? I don't mind, being baited, if that's what you like. I want to be all kinds of ways with you. Helpless sometimes. But cruel too. The way a man gets when he wants a woman so bad that all reason and courtesy abandon him. Do you remember the first time I embraced you? It was the day before the Battle of Blackwater. I saw you stumble on the turnpike stairs and I reached out to grab you, terrified that you meant to do yourself some kind of harm. You kept crying "let go of me" and fought me. You were so squirmy in my arms, the way a girl gets when she wants to come. Sometimes our feet touch at the supper table, do you ever notice that? When that happens, it takes my breath away, just from feeling your feet touch mine through our shoes. So you can imagine what I felt that day, holding you like that, the way animals do it. I could only pull you closer, harder up against me. It was so sweet to hold you, it had to be enough just to hold you, on that awful day, with Stannis' men preparing to seize the city and I felt my death was nearer than ever before. Might be that's why my head goes to dark places sometimes with you. Or might be it's because I just like dark things. After all, dismantling stakes, sapping foundations, storming a castle under siege, is so much merrier than strolling invited through open gates.

Have I made you run for the hills screaming yet? Or do you want to hear more? I want you so bloody bad right now. How lonely the body becomes after dusk. Is it the same with you? I miss you so much more in the evenings, in an intense, violent way that I don't feel during the heat of the day. Like I'm walking around with a knife in my side that I just don't know about until the night falls and that dreadful loneliness descends. It's too much to suffer sometimes. I long to be with you, play with you, fondle you, seduce you. I can see you now, my sweet Sansa. Your eyes are as big as fists when I grab your arse in the palms of my hands and lift you off your feet. I rub my cock against the rise of your sweet cunt, so there's no mistaking what you do to me. You start squirming and I can feel your hands push against my chest but their force is pleading, not fighting. They tell me to stop, but in a voice so quiet I know it's not meant to be heard. You struggle as I unlace you, as a meek as a dove, with nothing save little sighs to mark your protests. Finally, I have you down to just your linen shift. My hands pull the linen taut around the roundness of your teats and the fabric is so thin that I can see two little stiff points poking right out, all rosy and rude and insistent.

Gods' bless, your breasts must be a beautiful sight. They tilt up a little, don't they? That time we actually met in the kitchens, the sweetest torture I tell you: I saw how they strained against your bedgown. Did you notice how I kept kneading my thighs whenever you leaned in? I had to do it to keep my fingers from going where they wanted to go - to that little blue ribbon at your neckline. Imagine me pulling on it now, unwrapping you like I was unwrapping my name day present. Your skin's so pretty, as luminescent as a pearl in the dim torchlight. And pale, as pale as winter, so that the blue of the ribbon highlights your veins, giving you this ethereal look, like you were some magical creature I captured, one with its very heartbeat painted across its skin. I slide my fingers through your hair, the auburn strands are so soft that they could have belonged to a young child. Then I run my hands along your belly and rib cage and your skin's soft there too, softer than the threadbare shift that sought to hide it. At last, I cup a single breast, taking pleasure in the way your skin warms against my palms. Your breasts are full and heavy, with just that little tilt, and at the end, those rosy tips. So beautiful that the thought of them makes my eyes water, so luscious I can taste them now from three hundred leagues away. Would you like that? My kisses there and there? I think you would. You've got the kind of teats made for suckling a babe. Or a man.

I'm hard now, writing this. I've been hard since that part about grabbing your arse. Everything feels swollen down there and I'm kneading my thigh with my left hand to keep it from going inside my breeches. I never imagined I'd get hard from writing a letter. Is it the same with you, reading one? It drives me mad, the thought of you touching yourself while thinking of me. Will you do that for me, Sansa? Go on, girl, lick your fingers and rub the wetness over those stiff little points. Imagine my mouth there, my hands there, squeezing and suckling you softly, then a bit meaner. Do it until your nipples look kiss-bruised and slick from all the licking I gave them. I want to kiss you there for a long time, for as long as I needed, until everything cold and miserable inside of me turns hot. Burning hot. So hot it's a relief when I feel your cool hands on my skin. Greedy, greedy girl, you've had your fill with my hunger and now want to touch me back. You're touching me all over, fiddling with my tunic, your ticklish fingers making my stomach muscles all jumpy and tense as they circle lower and lower until I feel your thumb right there, rubbing that special spot I like - the sensitive groove on the underside of my cock. And all the while your mouth is on mine, kissing me back, thirsty, wallowing kisses, like I was a wine you wanted to get wrecked on. I'd do anything to feel that. To feel you kissing me while you tease my cock with your long cool fingers until my balls are bluer than a bruise.

You wanted to know how big I am, little bird? "Even your fingers looked absolutely immense, Gods only know what other parts would do. Split me in two, perhaps, though the thought never seemed half as bad as it should." My cock jerked a little when I read that passage. It slavers like a rabid dog whenever your sweet arse is around - I have to yank the beast back with a choke chain. I didn't think girls cared about how cocks looked, only about feelings. Well, go on, have your way then. Turn this page over, I traced it for you on the back. See how hard and thick I got for you? Thick as your wrists, girl. As for my length, this parchment is not room enough to show you. I'll give you this though - your dog's got a bone in his breeches that's as long as a Northern summer's day. You'll have to measure me when I get back to find out precisely how long that is.

I'm touching myself now. I sat on my left hand until it went numb so I could pretend better that the fingers stroking my body were yours. No tricks could give me my sweet, tender girl but it still feels good. Especially knowing you're reading this and maybe touching yourself too. Should I describe what I'm feeling? Well, I got my legs slightly apart and the cool night air feels sweet against my skin. The band of my smallclothes is binding my balls in a tight, uncomfortable way that's strangely perfect. You think you could circle me with your forefinger and thumb? I'd wager no. You'd have to clasp me palm to palm. Like you were in the middle of prayer. I'm imagining you like that, on your knees, beseeching my cock to slide through your slippery palms, fill your hot hungry mouth, fuck your tight wet cunt and bugger that sweet arse that never shits, in the most pious manner. That's making me laugh.

My little bird wouldn't have the first notion of what to do with my cock if she had the chance. That's fine by me. I'd get to show you what I like with my hands on yours. Real slow and tight to start, then faster. Harder. That's how I'd like to fuck you too. I'm going to have to be on top the first few times, Sansa. You'd be so sweet and tight and wet that I'd die if I couldn't move the way I wanted to. You want that too, don't you? You're the kind of girl that wants to be taken, I reckon. You'd need to yield before you can feel ready to take for yourself. I'd try not to be rough though, I promise. I'd move sweet and slow to start. Not just for you but for me too. I've been so bloody patient, waiting and hoping until its almost more than I can bear. It's been five long years since I felt anything other than my own fists. I just want to revel in that feeling of being pulled in, of being sucked on, almost, by your breathing, beating, hairlined cunt of heaven.

If I could, I'd make that moment last a hundred years. But I probably couldn't last five minutes, not with my little cuntie clenching around me every time I move a muscle. By the end of it, you'd have me so riled up I can't promise I'd be gentle anymore. I want to show that to you, though. Show you the sweet side of a man's aggression for once. Flip you over until you're on all fours and fuck you like the dog I am. Would you like that? I can picture you now, your hair dangling down, your arms braced forward, your knees sinking into the bed. That slippery cunt, so wet and ready for me, pink from the fucking I already gave it. I'd rest my cock against the cleft of your arse cheeks, just to admire the view, before grabbing your hips and sinking myself inside of you. I'd kill to see that, see my cock withdrawing and disappearing inside of you in fast, steady strokes. You'd be so tight that way, make me feel like I had the biggest cock in the Seven Kingdoms. And I could wrap my arm around you and tease that little button just above your sweet cunt. You'd want to look at my face though, wouldn't you? Good girl, you'd turn to face me, gazing at me with those quiet, dark blue eyes, your sweet mouth slightly parted so I can see your tongue tenderly coiled when you moan those soft, desperate little moans. Bloody hell, I'd fuck that mouth at the same time too if I could. And when you start moaning my name because you're not far from coming all over that big cock I'm fucking you with, that's when I'd really learn the meaning of patience. Not some bullshit seven second pause but really holding it off, until frustration isn't frustration anymore but another level of desire. And I'm curling right over your body because its too bloody sweet. And I can feel everything, every beat, every breath, every tiny ridge of your sweet pulsing cunt as it milks my cock of every single last drop of come. I'd like to die like that way, buried deep inside of you and without a single bloody useless thought in my head. Brain as blank as a cloudless sky. Fucking heaven.

Well, I'm absolutely dripping over that fine Myrish carpet you thought to lard my tent with. I've never come from writing a letter, so I hope you're proud of yourself. My sweet Sansa, my little cuntie, my little fuck bird, I can't write any more. You've left me so peaceful and cleaned out feeling that all I can do now is drop off to sleep. I'm going to go and lie down but I'll continue this letter tomorrow. I hope you sleep well and maybe even dream of me.

My little bird, tonight is the 29th of the month. I'm not going to bother reading what I wrote above but I hope I didn't say anything that would offend you. It's all nonsense anyhow, whatever I wrote. Especially the part about buggering you. I just like saying the word 'bugger' and I don't know why. Enough of my foolery. Now for your questions:

Twenty thousand quarrels and a hundred sheaves of arrows. Above all, make sure we get wine – half a dozen carts at least. Morale's bad without wine and even worse, I fear the spread of water-borne illnesses. "Famine and foul water alone vanquishes the invincible and by itself can take cities" – I read that from the book you sent me, History of the Rhoynish Wars. Some of Beldecar's advice is not terrible but he's one of those assertive bastards which makes me long to argue back.

I did get Rickon's letters but haven't found the time to respond. The boy's writing needs some work. It's no surprise, given he lived with unlettered wildings all those years. My own father cracked the bullwhip about my lessons. He was mighty proud that an upjumped House such as ours was able to retain a maester so that his own children could have the smattering of scholarship that he never received. You'd be astounded by how many high lords' gets can't read or write worth shit. Joffrey's own script looked like chicken scratches. I've gotten much better at writing, maybe you can tell. I can write for more than an hour now as long as my parchment is patient and my inkwell doesn't run dry. No more hand cramps either and your sly dog can do it all with only one paw on the table.

I didn't eat the lemoncakes. They were moldy by the time they arrived. Save them for yourself as lemons are too dear to be wasted like that. Truth be told, I was never a lover of cake to begin with. Potted meat to improve my lunch would be nice instead and crocks of butter are always welcome. Sansa, little bird, I don't want you to take this the wrong way but you must stop worrying about me. I told you before: I'm not through with living yet and I just know that I will return to you, safe and sound. So if I'm not worried about me, then you shouldn't worry about me either. It's getting pretty old, to be honest. It's not so much I mind hearing about it but you're making yourself sick with all your pointless worrying. So promise me, no more tears, my brave girl. And please, stop worrying and stay well and dress warm and watch out for rats or spiders or anything else that might cause you harm. I'd lay down and die if anything should happen to you, don't you know that? My little bird, I'm kissing you on your forehead now with every confidence that I'll be seeing you just as soon as fate allows. Until then, I am yours as you are mine, on these pages. I love you.

Sandor


End file.
